Sunday, December 31, 2006

And, chronicle 5,000 years of religion in 90 seconds. This latter is kind of cool though. Nice summary of time, space and religion. Interesting that this was created by MapsOfWar.com, illustrating the historical correlation between war and religion. You can kind of hear middle America chanting, "Woooo! Go blue!!" towards the end.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

It's a touch late on the holiday tip, but it's never too late for some eggnogg. (Though June would probably be too late.) Growing up in a pro-temperence, anti-sex-drugs-rockandroll protestant community, the addictions were few and far between, and typically sugar-based, like ice cream and soda pop. And gee whiz, what a jones didn't I have for some eggnogg! Honest Abe, that was the sauce in my 'hood! Biatch!

A few years ago I spent a cold winter back in the 'Lou, coaching some freshman basketball, and a friend of mine asked me to write a song for a compilation of local artists doing holiday material. I hadn't written any holiday material, and I was somewhat averse to covering any existing holiday material. "I don't care, you can trash Christmas if you want," he told me. I wasn't so into that idea, but I do enjoy working on assignment to push me out of my own head. So we spat in our hands and shook on it.

This is one of those songs that wrote itself once I got the idea. I think I woke one morning and jotted it all on the back of a scrap of daily calendar. This is a new recording, and to spice it up on short notice -- some nutmeg, if you will -- I've thrown a assload of reverb on it and some applause at the end. Leaving us with what I'll call the "Live at Town Hall" recording of "Eggnogg Is The Liquor Of This Household".

Eggnogg Is The Liquor Of This Household

Eggnogg is the liquor of this householdA cask will scarcely last us all a weekSugar, eggs, milk and nutmeg are the substances we choose to abuse

Eggnogg is the liquor of this householdAnd there will be no inebriated kinEggnogg is just wholesome, wholesome holiday fun for everyone involved

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

A holiday tune is forthcoming (and we all wait for those with baited breath, and how!), but this Wednesday falls on a cover week for the F Posterity project. So this week I'm dropping a countrified cover of a Radiohead song.

I really do hear the swung beat of an old country song in Radiohead's "Like Spinning Plates". Incidentally, only crazy Radiohead fans are likely to recognize this for a few reasons. It was initially released on their Amnesiac album, a collection of cryptic leftovers from the Kid A recordings. The song as included on that set was a wild abstraction of the song, featuring those tubes that emit various pitches depending on how hard you swing them. Thom Yorke sings as though his voice were being played backwards, so it's near impossible to make out the lyrics. Typical of a kind of studio madness that blurs the recognizability of an original composition. Finally, a straightforward rendering of the song is available on their live recording, I Might Be Wrong, but who bought that?

I imagine this song could have ended up on another Johnny Cash American recording. Since it didn't, it's ending up on mine.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

It's obviously honky-tonk Wednesday, so I'm dropping a honky-tonk anthem this week. A buddy and I wrote this song in 2003, when he was a reporter for the Seattle Times. Years ago he worked in a factory in eastern Washington and the experience spawned the idea. In associating with his co-workers on breaks, he noticed that they divided neatly into alcoholics and Jesus-freaks. The nature of the job was sufficiently bleak to drive everyone to refuge in drink or devotion. Jack or Jesus.

He sent me out some ideas he had for lyrics, and I put together a chorus and some music. The final product didn't quite capture the essence he was looking for, and in particular the line, "Jack or Jesus will pick up the pieces" didn't suit him, as he felt that "picking up the pieces" is something a divorced housewife does, not a hardened factory worker.

One of the strange quandaries of the creative process is the dynamic between one's vision and the actual product. Too many times the product of anyone's vision - art, music, film - matches not what the artist had in mind. And yet, the product becomes its own creature, reaching people in ways not anticipated. Usually the artist thinks, "OMG, this is teh awful!" and the adoring crowds are like, "LOLz it roxxorz my wafflz!"

I've pretty much recorded the song as we left it, though in most of the choruses I sing, "Jack or Jesus will tear you to pieces" instead of "pick up the pieces". Which is probably better.

I think this is the honkiest song I've ever recorded.

Jack or Jesus

When you work in the factory, boy, you better choose:Who's gonna save your soul?'Cause everybody in this place has got the bluesWith just a couple ways to copeSo when the pain starts in the back of your heartAnd it's all too much to handleThere are two men to face who'll take your case:Jesus or Jack Daniels

Yes Jack or Jesus will pick up the piecesAnd show you which way to goBut I'm afraid it ain't part of the gameFor you to follow them both

They pay minimum wage to work the pearly gatesThat close this factory inDon't be surprised if it ain't paradiseOr any other place you been'Cause it's a hell of a time on the factory lineWhere your fifteen-minute breakWill only feel like five and the rest of your timeLike eighteen hours a day

But Jack or Jesus will pick up the piecesAnd show you which way to goBut I'm afraid it ain't part of the gameFor you to follow them both

So at the end of your shift, you can take your pick:Hit the bottle, or crack the bookThere are folks you know doing either of thoseAnd it's probably all just as goodBecause in this world it's long been provenBoth of these paths can lead to ruinThere's heaven and hell in each conclusionWhether you're Jesus or Jack Daniels

But Jack or Jesus will pick up the piecesAnd show you which way to goBut I'm afraid it ain't part of the gameFor you to follow them both

But try to remember on your three-day benderEven the man spent some timeWith sinners, and lepers, and prostitutesAnd turned water into wine

Jack or Jesus will pick up the piecesAnd show you which way to goBut I'm afraid it ain't part of the gameFor you to follow them both

Wednesday, December 6, 2006

Started writing this last night and spent most of the day recording it. Sometimes a song just sounds incomplete without the right musical parts around it, so I ended up throwing on the drums and bass and whatnot too. All raggy-tag-like.

I treasure songs that read like poetry, and in some respects I'm going for that. These aren't typically the kind of songs that catch your ear with a phonky hook per se, but the more you listen the more you find. Turner Cody is a great poet musician of this style, and I highly recommend his work.

This is for the cryptics.

Runes

Runes - you speak in runesCommunicating fractal scratchesWherein nothing matches suitAnd it proves just what it provesNot that flax is spun to goldBut that the cinders of your spindles hide the truth

Yonder pass the scribes assailingSimple forms of better building(Letters in the fetters of their form)And hither swell the tillers hailingHigher modes of mechanism(Masters of the bait to bite the worm)

And all this, too, shall passThe yoke, the bit, the bite, the boat, the lashThe serenading pound of tympanumAmidst the sounding brass upon the last predicted tune

Runes - you speak in runesCommunicating backwards fractalsWherein nothing seems uncouthAnd it proves just what it provesNot that flax is spun to goldBut that the cinders of your spindles hold the truth

Blinding beam the smiles of hypocritesLighthousing empty cricks(Trickles for the herrings for their trails)And gaping yawns the dawn ofDisinterested pesticide(Tickles for the victors beyond the pale)

And all this, too, shall clashThe yoke, the bit, the bite, the beat, the cashThe serenading sound of sympathyAmidst the cymbal crash upon the predicated swoon

Runes - you speak in runesCommunicating fractal scratchesWherein nothing matches suitAnd it proves just what it provesNot that flax is spun to goldBut that the cinders of your spindles hide the truth

Friday, December 1, 2006

I have to write out about a quote I read this morning in the Monitor. The article "EPA staffers go to Hill over global warming" features a great chart comparing US states' emission of greenhouse gases to that of entire countries. If states were individual nations, six would rank among the top 30 emitters of greenhouse gases worldwide.

But what got me was this infuriating quote:

"Deputy Solicitor General Gregory Garre argued that Congress never gave the EPA authority to regulate CO2. Even if the agency had the authority, he continued, "now is not the time to exercise such authority, in light of the substantial scientific uncertainty surrounding global climate change and the ongoing studies to address those uncertainties.""

The only "substantial scientific uncertainty", of course, is whether or not the Bush White House can accept documented science when it conflicts with corporate profiteering. And Garre's contention that the EPA lacks the authority to regulate CO2 hinges on the brainless argument that CO2 is not a pollutant. As if the thousands of tons of CO2 introduced into the air by industry, energy, and automobiles aren't pollution. If that's the case, perhaps Garre could sit in his garage with the car running for a few hours.

Beyond the more self-evident documentations available in An Inconvenient Truth about what greenhouse gases are doing to the atmosphere, Elizabeth Kolbert covered the irreparable effect CO2 is having on the oceans in the New Yorker last month.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

It's a rare day that I get to snap until my fingers go numb. This is an old song that I never really wrote, just sort of tooled around with, not intending a song as I learned clawhammer banjo. Dave Van Ronk did the same thing with his song "Bamboo", which was just a guitar fingering exercise he turned into a song. Peter, Paul and Mary covered it and payed his bills for a good while. So I've got huge hopes for this by the transitive property.

I've had gospel harmonies in my head for a good while now, and I think they're going to start finding their way out. The old-timey four-part sound. I want to write some modern hymns in this style, not hymns qua hymns, but songs stealing their aesthetic from a hymnbook.

But here's a new banjo track. Two verses written today, two written in 2002.

We Leave Just Like We Come

Time's rolling forward, rolling like a plumThe days roll toward us and they leave just like they comeThey leave just like they come

The sun rises eastward and sets up in the westIt climbs the sky all morning and it leaves just like the restYes it leaves just like the rest

And we all say the same things in quarter notes and half-tones and thirdsWe all sing the same things in different tongues and different tunesWith different tons of words

The grass bends backwards and the oak trees undressThe smoke rises upwards and we burn to be possessedYes we burn to be possessed

Mind marches onward, marches to the drumWe just take it higher and leave just like we comeWe leave just like we come

And we all say the same things in quarter notes and half-tones and thirdsWe all sing the same things in different tongues and different tunesWith different tons of words

We leave just like we leave just like we cameWe leave just like we leave just like we cameWe leave just like we cameWe leave just like we cameWe leave just like we leave just like we came

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Today's song is a sentimental old fluff I wrote back in the wayback. After studying me some Django Rhinehard, I played around with his triad style of chording (he only played with two fingers and a thumb due to a burn that constricted his last two fingers) and came up with this song as an instrumental. When my brother Jon and I finally got around to making music together in 2003, he asked me to throw out a song to collaborate on while I was in St. Louis. But since 2000, when I had written it, the only lyric I had was "Shampoo!"

I kind of love songs in the imperative. You can read this song as a mandate. Or an accountability moment, if you're into politics.

So Jon and I got to recording it, and I realized it really did need some lyrics. You can't just order someone to shampoo without an explanation. So three years after writing the music, I wrote up the song, and a few years after that, we got to playing it out with the band. It really does need a horn section, drums and upright bass to be complete, but we'll get to that when the money is thrown at me violently.

Also, this marks the first week of the last six months of the F Posterity project. Halfway done.

Shampoo!

Hopscotch down to the animule ballAnd don't sweat the check at allThe chaps wear caps and the girls wear curlsAnd everybody's ten foot tallThe lights is low and the band plays slowAnd darling I love you, just so you knowWe is refined and we dignifiedAnd we never, but never pass up a chance toShampoo!

It's pink champagne off a black umbrellaA chic speakeasy down in the cellarWe need know your intentions soWhen the time is right we can all coincide toShampoo!

So you grab your coat and I'll sign the waiverAll we're gonna wear is a pair of life saversI rather it lathered, and not too soonAnd if it makes sense to you, we can all commence toShampoo!

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

This week's F Posterity is a cover song, but it hearkens back to the time when covers weren't covers, they were songs. In the golden age of commercial recording, everybody sang everybody else's music, and it wasn't "covering" another artist, it was singing a song. And the king of not being covered was Bob Dylan.

Dave Van Ronk was the first to cover a Dylan song, a little-known piece called "He Was A Friend of Mine". It's probably safe to say that since then, there have been hundreds of thousands of Bob Dylan covers recorded. Everything from lounge to bossa to instrumental to r&b covers. Particularly in the sixties, everybody (everybody) recorded "Blowing In the Wind". And Hendrix made most famous Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower," to which Dylan said of Hendrix, "They're more his songs than they are mine." (Or something like that.) I think it's been covered to death at this point. Vis à vis.

This song was recorded a lot in the sixties. It never appeared on a Dylan album, besides a live cut of it on his Greatest Hits. I think Ian and Sylvia were best known for it, but a search on iTunes will show you "covers" by the usual suspects in Joan Baez, The Kingston Trio, Judy Collins, and less expected peoples like Rod Stewart and Elvis.

It's a great song, the kind of love song that doesn't get written nowadays. I'm most partial to the bootleg of Dylan's publisher's demo, because he's this kid singing a love song he wrote. And it'll play around the world as soon as the publishers get selling it, but at that moment, it's just some thing he wrote, probably for Suze Rotolo. He's just written so many damn songs, so many unexpected wonders. And I love this one.

Wednesday, November 8, 2006

Here's another brand new song, written today and yesterday. I'm kind of digging the process of putting it out on the edge with new stuff that I haven't let settle to my own satisfaction. If nothing less, I'll have a bunch of songs that need revising.

I was talking with Marcio about music making last month after Sam Roberts played the 9:30 Club, and he pointed out that eventually, you get to the point of writing songs and "covering" yourself when it's time to record an album. In other words, you get to treating your own material like it's a cover song, and then adjusting it to the vibe and style you're going for on any particular project. With that perspective, it's easy to see the stuff I put up here is fairly irrelevant, because none of it would sound much like the finished product. These are essentially still pen on paper, not oil on canvas.

Here's a different kind of tune. I'm really trying to write in a different voice, a different approach to making music out of nothing. With making music, it's easy to switch gears by playing with other musicians or saturating your ears with new music. It's harder to do with writing, because writing tends to be by habit or method, and when one gets into a groove, it takes faith to kick it somewhere else and try something new in form or fashion.

This song's for the dreamers who, like I do, chronically head off with no sort of plan beyond a vague idea of what they want.